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Many of the superlatives describing Angel Olsen refer to how seemingly little it takes for her to leave an audience speechless, even spellbound. But Olsen has never been as timid as those descriptors imply, and the noisy, fiery hints in her earlier work find a fuller expression on her newest LP, Burn Your Fire for No Witness. Here, Olsen sings with full-throated exultation, admonition, and bold, expressive melody. Also, with the help of producer John Congleton, her music now crackles with a churning, rumbling low end and a brighter energy.
Angel Olsen began singing as a young girl in St. Louis, where she explored the remarkable range of her voice and the places it could take her songwriting. Her self-released debut EP, "Strange Cacti," belied both that early period of discovery and her Midwestern roots. Cautious and homespun on the one hand, the EP transported us to a mystical, unrecognizable world on the other, and it garnered extensive praise for its enigmatic beauty. Olsen then went further on Half Way Home, her first full-length album (released on Bathetic Records), which mined essential themes while showcasing a more developed voice. Olsen dared to be more personal.
After extensive touring, Olsen eventually settled for a time in Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood, where she created "a collection of songs grown in a year of heartbreak, travel, and transformation." The new songs go on to tell us to leave, or to high-five a lover who is lacking, or to dance our way up and out of sorrow. Many of them also remain essentially unchanged from their bare beginnings. In leaving them so intact, a more self-assured Olsen is opening up to us, allowing us to be in the room with her at the very genesis of these songs, when the thread of creation is most vulnerable and least filtered. Our reward for entering this room are many head-turning moments and the powerful, unsettling recognition of ourselves in the weave of her songs.
This act of meaning-making recurs as a theme throughout the album, as the sublimating response to the power of negativity. In the song, "Stars", for example, Olsen wishes to "have the voice of everything" and in a moment of hatefulness and hurt realizes that the strength of fury results in the power she had been seeking all along. Thankfully for us, Olsen has decided to channel a lot of this newfound power into the ethereal, hypnotic performances of her new and revealing songs, sharing with us the full grace and beauty of her transformative moments.

There was a time, just yesterday in cosmic terms but increasingly difficult for the young’uns to remember, when Chuck Berry provided the essential template for rock and roll bands. These days those bedrock r&b foundations may feel remote, or even archeological, but Nashville country-rock combo Promised Land Sound (formerly Promised Land) chose to begin at the beginning, unselfconsciously; they named themselves after an immortal road-dogging Berry jam and proceeded from there. For such a young band—belying their seasoned and subtle musicianship, they’re astonishingly all around or well under the quarter-century mark—they’re remarkably attuned to historical precedents, working the same red dirt/swamp boogie and country-fried choogle as the Flying Burritos, Jim Ford, Gene Clark, Jesse Ed Davis, Link Wray, the Band, CCR, Dennis Linde, Johnny Darrell, the Stones, et al. And yet their tweaking of tradition never registers as revivalist or dilettantish, but rather intelligently informed, refreshingly sincere, and reflectively rooted in the highest calibers of Southern vernacular songcraft. The woodshedding and session-vet vibes are palpable, the live show compellingly unhinged and propulsive, all close harmonies, high-Stax changes, and “whoa, did he just do that?” guitar breaks, punctuated by moments of Velvets-style thud.

Promised Land Sound emerged from the fertile Nashville garage scene—members have played with PUJOL, Denney and the Jets, and members of JEFF The Brotherhood and Those Darlins, among others—but they have quickly evolved to deploy a more varied country and soul palette than most of their brethren and sistren. In short order, they’ve managed to attract the admiration of esteemed folks like fellow Nashvillain Jack White, who released a live 7” of theirs on his Third Man Records. Bassist and singer Joey Scala and his younger brother Evan (drums) originally hail from Roanoke, Virginia but moved to Tennessee in 2000. In another exploration of a venerable American tradition, Joey spent some time hitchhiking around after high school, eventually meeting Nashville lifer and guitar prodigy Sean Thompson and playing in a succession of local bands together before beginning to write in earnest as a team. Keyboard player and pianist Ricardo Alessio tells us he was raised by an insular homeschooling family in Southeast Michigan and classically trained. Luke Schneider sometimes guests on pedal steel. Our slack-jawed reaction upon first hearing Promised Land Sound live at the Stone Fox in Nashville abides: These dudes can play.

Paradise of Bachelors is delighted to release Promised Land Sound’s first full-length album, which is currently in the works, co-produced by Nashville guitar wizard (and Hiss Golden Messenger band member) William Tyler and Jem Cohen of the Ettes and the Parting Gifts. Stay tuned for more details, and keep on chooglin’.